Here’s the scenario. You meet someone you think you could like. You’ve hung out three or four times, maybe a few dates and then meeting up with his friends for drinks. You start to think you do like him. You start opening up, talking about your family or dreams or whatever it is you think makes you special. He does the same. In fact, when you meet his friends, they already know about you. You think to yourself, ok this could be something. Then….
NOTHING. He doesn’t call back. That’s how he ends it. He doesn’t think he owes you a phone call or an explanation or even a text to say “no thanks, I’m not interested anymore.” He just doesn’t respond. In the last year, so many of my friends have had little flings end like this. What does it take for a guy to dump you properly? Now, I know girls do this too, but it seems to me that by and large, this is mainly perpetrated by men. I’ve talked many times with other girls about how to have these awkward conversations so I know some of them are doing it. I also know men want to say that it’s just easier for women to communicate and that this is how men deal with stuff. But that’s just total malarkey. I’m guessing some men are either to selfish to care or more likely just cowards.
If a man does not call you back, he has told you clearly that you are dumped. He has told you just as clearly that you are dumped as if he called you up and said, “You are dumped.”
Men don’t want to talk about the relationship as much as women want to talk about it. That doesn’t mean they don’t care. Unless you are having sex with the guy, he doesn’t think you love him anyway.
That is the primary way that a man understands his woman loves him — she gives him her body. Not through words and not through food and not through gifts.
There is only one circumstance in which I am interested in talking about our relationship — and that is if I am doing intimate things with you. Other than that, I don’t want to discuss the relationship. I don’t want to worry about your birthday and the like.
If the woman stops doing intimate things with me, I don’t want to discuss it. I just want to move on.
I don’t think men in these situations are less likely to return calls. I’ve gone out with women who just stopped returning my call.
I hated it. I thought it was cowardly.
More annoyingly, I’ve been stood up on a date a few times. I am sure a lot more women do this than men do. Men still have the burden of asking women out far more often than women ask men out.
On Nov. 22, Tamara blogged about her difficulty saying no when a guy asks for her phone number.
So Tamara seems to have the same difficulty with certain awkward male-female dating conversations that she bemoans many guys have when they don’t explicitly spell out to a girl that it is over.
I recall a fascinating discussion of Jewish law by Rabbi Michael Broyde about dashed expectations in dating. Can a woman take a man to a Beit Din if she believes he lead her on? I think that was the topic.
The rabbi said no. He used the analogy of a taxi. If you call for a taxi, and then another taxi shows up earlier, you take that taxi. That’s just how the game works.
So too with dating. If you are stood up on a date, or your expectations aren’t fulfilled, you just suck it up and get back out there because that is how the game works.
If you get into a relationship and then you are cut off without explanation, then you have to question your own judgment of character. What allowed you to get into a relationship with a low-life? What signs were you ignoring?
We need to develop our own differentiation — that is the ability to hold on to ourselves while staying in relationship with those important to us.
When we start dating, we develop ideas about the other person that are rarely rooted in reality (and are more rooted in our early years and how we learned to relate to the opposite sex).
Life rarely goes according to our scenarios. This is painful. A differentiated person holds on to himself and to his integrity while trying to stay in relationship. An undifferentiated person goes to pieces when life doesn’t go according to his expectations.
JEFF EMAILS: This statement is at the heart of the matter. Men are hunters. To some degree, the date is a commodity, like a taxi. Men use women for their needs, status, etc, so if the scent of a better prey comes around, they’re off on the hunt. Women don’t see themselves as commodities, but feel they are building “relationships” and that they are connecting as “soul mates”, etc.
The only scene I know of where this isn’t true is in the yeshivish world. The girls compete, who gets a “guy” from a better yeshivah, a better family, richer, etc. To some degree there is a role reversal, other than money perhaps to a yeshiva guy the wife is his zivug, and he doesn’t play the field or hunt like everyone else.